Silicon Photonics, Hybrid Integration, and Frequency Combs: Technologies for Terabit/s Communications, Teratronics, and Optical Metrology

Photonic integration enables miniaturized optical systems that comprise hundreds of individual devices. Silicon photonics is a particularly interesting platform, offering large-scale photonic-electronic integration and fabless fabrication in highly developed CMOS foundries. Silicon as an optical material, however, falls short of properties that are indispensable for many devices: The indirect bandgap prevents efficient light emission, and crystal symmetry inhibits electro-optic effects. This talk will give an overview on our research in the area of hybrid photonic integration, which complements silicon photonics by other material systems. Silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) integration uses silicon waveguides with organic cladding materials and is particularly well suited for electro-optic modulators. This concept is complemented by photonic multi-chip integration that combines dies of different materials. Chip-scale frequency comb generators finally lend themselves as sources in terabit/s data transmission, high-speed signal processing, and optical metrology. The review of fundamental technological concepts will be complemented by a discussion of selected application demonstrations.